When we talk about “standards participants” we are really using a broad brush- we mean firms who invent the technology that goes into standards (“innovators”), firms that build standards into products (“implementers”) and end users of the product and standards within it (“users”). Researchers often layer other groups of interested parties over these participants– including the government or the general public– although these other interested parties are not always participants in the sense that they show up at technical committees and participate in the creation of a standard. While the utopian goal of SSOs is to create policies that result in “balance” among these interests, ultimately balance means different things to different people in different situations. One author has very clearly pointed out how differing business models among firms create differing incentives for various SSO participants. As the old phrase goes “you say tomato, I say tomahto.”

Given the range of participants and interested parties, the criteria or attributes that one could use to assess SSOs are necessarily quite broad. In 1998, the US government was one of the first to set forth a list of attributes which were used to define “voluntary consensus standards bodies” in OMB Circular A-119. Those attributes included “openness,” “Balance of interest,” “Due process,” “An appeals process” and “consensus.” Several years later, the WTO’s Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade adopted a set of principles which speak to a similarly wide range of matters relating to fairness in standard setting, including transparency and consensus. More recently, the European Commission enumerated a similar set of attributes in a whitepaper entitled “Modernising ICT Standardisation in the EU – The Way Forward.”

Where the real challenge lies though, is in taking those generally accepted attributes forward and creating a certification scheme or an assessment system based upon how an SSO approaches each of these attributes of its process. A very thoughtful and informative study by IDC illustrates the challenges of trying to establish a ranking system for even a single one of these attributes. That study examined whether there was a way to “evaluate the degree of openness of the leading standards setting organizations” and it incorporated under the concept of “openness” many of the attributes mentioned so far, including transparency, due process, access to documents and so on. In the course of applying these attributes to ten SSOs, the study made several key conclusions, including these:

• “It is difficult to see any clear patterns in the ratings”
• “[T]he concepts of openness and consensus have been implemented using different models that relate to the type of organization, their formal foundation and their degrees of formalization”
• “It can be… difficult to make a distinction of which form of ’openness’ is the most appropriate”
• “[the] concept [of “openness”] has been implemented in different ways in different standards setting organizations which renders comparisons difficult”

Just by way of illustration, the study pointed out that for one attribute– openness of membership– it might be tempting to just focus on cost of membership, since lower membership fees would result in a perception of more openness. Such limited funding, however, “means fewer activities in cost intensive areas like interoperability testing,” which are of course important for the long term success of the standard. These findings from the IDC study are interesting and lend strong support to the contention that the various SSO attributes we have been discussing are not amenable to a comparison system which is then aggregated across the range of attributes to attempt to provide a meaningful distinction among SSOs.

Despite the demonstrated impracticability of such a system, it is possible that “Part 2” of BSI PAS 98 could wind up being used to do just that. Part 1 “represents a codification of good practice and procedures for the establishment and operation of consortia” which one would assume will largely reflect the previously mentioned SSO attributes. Part 2 is entitled “Evaluating standards related consortia”. While BSI may disclaim any intent for the evaluation process in Part 2 to be used to construct some type of certification program, examples abound of past standards where unplanned certification schemes materialized.

At the end of the day, it seems to me that we shouldn’t put form over substance: We should not lose sight of the distinction between a successful standard and a successful (or “highly rated”) SSO. History has taught us that even the seemingly “best” SSO is capable of producing standards which ultimately see little or no uptake in the marketplace. Likewise, high quality and market winning standards have emerged out of what we might charitably call less than open and inclusive processes (some of which might not initially have even involved something that we would even call an SSO). One the best examples of this complex dynamic between form and substance is the emergence of TCP/IP from an informal collaboration among researchers to win out over a competing standard ISO/IEC 7498-1:1994 (more commonly known as the OSI Model) that was subject to far greater formalities. If we rigidly apply this list of SSO attributes we clearly run the risk of ending up in a situation where we might “force” the market to use a standard from a “better” SSO, in effect that would mean the “next OSI” might prevail over the “next TCP/IP.”

Back to the forum

Oliver Bell (Reforming the Reformist Agenda) highlighted the benefits associated with a range of diversified SSOs. His claim is that today’s SSOs exist in an ecosystem formed by a dynamic market and the diversity we see, offers the prerequisite flexibility, competition and choice, for this market. No standard produced by an SSO or standards setting process, can be said to be “better” than that of another SSO or even guaranteed to hold “some level of immediate intrinsic value”. Therefore, when speaking of reforming SSOs, the focus should not be on simplifying the industry as a whole and hence decreasing the broad array of processes available today; but rather the inclusion of a “broader array of voices collaborating” to evolve the processes we have today towards meet the needs we know industry will have in the future. He concludes that although the vast diversity present in the ICT standards setting process can lead to a fair amount of confusion and frustration; the current system of diversified SSOs provides a solid platform to build upon.

Anne Layne-Farrar discussed the implications that arise from government intervention into SSOs’ governance models (Greasing the Gears or Gumming Them Up? The Government’s Role in Standard Setting Governance). Layne-Farrar points to the dangers of imposing a cap on licensing fees imposed by patent holders for intellectual property deemed essential to the standard. Specifically, she covers a model of limiting the maximum rate to that of the incremental value contributed by the IPR. She suggests that an imposition such as this would seriously decrease the economic incentives of innovation and fails to address the difficulty inherent in determining this incremental value. Furthermore, a trade off is to be made between the degree of openness and consensus and the speed of the standard setting process. Any government mandated rule would simply provide a one-size-fits-all solution which would ignore the diversity seen among SSOs today.

Ajit Jaokar (The Open Web Foundation and the Evolution of Web SSO?) shared his experiences from the Open Web Foundation. He expresses his belief that the OWF fills a gap in the SSO market as it essentially functions as a community-driven incubator of standards and because of its democratic ethos. Also, the OWF offers flexibility and openness, brings together formal and informal standards and addresses issues of future development. Thus, Ajit finishes by raising the question: Is the path chosen by the OWF a shape of things to come?

In an exclusive interview, Per Andersen, Managing Director of IDC Nordic and Benelux discussed the difficulties of setting criteria for openness in order to compare SSOs, since no unambiguous result can be found due to the loosely defined meaning of “openness”. This, he said, led to his study rather comparing “nuances of openness” in all aspects, from IPR policies to meeting documentation. Further, Andersen described the public sector interest in open standards as political strategy, and pointed out that such governmental involvement is rarely successful, especially not when rules are imposed in areas where market dynamics are much better instruments for achieving their goals.

In a second interview, Peter Brown, OASIS Board Chairman, gave valuable insights into the governance of OASIS. The market success of OASIS, he said, has been the result of confidence, which in turn has been achieved through OASIS’s transparency policies covering the entire standards setting process. This high level of confidence has been critical due to OASIS’s active involvement in areas such as eID and eHealth, where personal integrity is vital. Brown also discussed his belief that OASIS would not respond to any governmental attempts to influence the governance of the organization, although he has not yet seen any such attempts manifested. In conclusion, he welcomed the debate on SSO transparency. While he believes that many bodies are reluctant to open up because they are reliant on monetizing on standards, OASIS will remain vigilant and continue to push for the development and implementation of open standards.

A major theme of the interview was his 2008 report titled the “Evaluation of Ten Standard Setting Organizations with Regard to Open Standards” (full pdf here). The report, that was commission by the Danish Government, seeks to evaluate and compare the openness of 10 Standards Setting organizations. A summary of the report can be found here.

Other topics addressed during the interview are SSO Governance, Open Standards as well as the role of government in the standards setting process.

Interview for Talkstandards.com with Per Andersen, Managing Director IDC Nordic and Benelux

Talkstandards [TS]: Your report, “Evaluation of Ten Standards Setting Organizations with Regard to Open Standards”, was a result of the Danish parliament’s adoption of a 2006 resolution to ensure the public sector’s use of open standards. Would you say that this was a political reaction to the increased use of informal standards, particularly in the ICT industry? If so, why do you think that this has happened in Denmark?

Per Andersen [PA]: As with many political decisions they are not necessarily based on a purely technical rationale – as politicians are not expects in IT. In this case one particular party made “open standards” a key political issue, based on what I believe was a combination of lobbyism from open source communities and a genuine interest in trying to ensure increased software interoperability. It took some time for them to get support for the agenda, but at the end they succeeded as no other party wanted to support “closed, proprietary standards” of image reasons.

TS: What do you see as the driving motivation behind the increased government interest in open standards, and particularly the interest in the industry-driven standardization process?

PA: The initiatives around open standards are an extension of the government “OIO” (“Public Information Online”) which was started in 2001 with the objective of creating common platforms and the possibility of exchange of data across all public organizations. It was natural for the National IT Agency to start promoting the use of standards (such as XML) in the public sector. Therefore, the government is looking for widely accepted standards – which in reality are often industry defined standards, although the government does not have a preference for such standards per se.

TS: In your report, you evaluate and compare ten standard setting organizations based on their degrees of openness both within the organization themselves and consequently the products they deliver. How did you initially tackle this problem and did you face any difficulties when setting the comparison criteria?

PA: Fortunately, some research had been done in this area, such as by Ken Krechmer. The challenge was to make a number of abstract criteria operational so that they could be tested against the actual realities of SSOs. In this process we tried to frame the criteria by looking at what SSOs of various types were actually doing.

TS: An ongoing theme throughout the report is the difficultly faced when comparing these organizations based on openness. Where does this difficulty arise?

PA: The major difficulty, which relates to the previous question, is that “openness” is a very loosely defined quantity. At the same time, any SSO must be open in some way or form – if standards are secrets, not documented or not supported, they will obviously not be adopted – which is not at all the intention of the SSO. So, it basically came down to comparing “nuances of openness” or basic principles of the interpretation of “openness” – which can be questioned as meaningful.

TS: What qualities or attributes of openness are regarded as most important? Can you identify how the focus of which qualities are considered important shifts between different end users (e.g. public sector, industry, consumers)?

PA: In reality, the only major difference is found in the IPR area. Here the opposite attitudes towards “free IPR” versus “licensed IPR” were very visible between various organizations. However, it is not necessarily a question of “openness” but is a quite different discussion about innovation and business processes – yes, one can have an opinion about this, but I don’t see it as “open” versus “closed”.

TS: How does the differences in openness across the compared SSOs relate to their internal governance?

PA: First of all, SSO’s governance can be more or less documented. But the fact that it is not fully documented does not necessarily mean that they do not operate in an open way. In fact we found examples of more open organizations with less formalized documentation of this. Secondly, even if the governance is documented there is no guarantee that the organization is actually behaving according to the governance. So, another challenge was to evaluate how SSOs are operating versus the actual formal governance.

TS: Within your report you discuss that there is a lot of variation in how different SSOs face the tradeoff between open and closed membership in regards to funding. How does this tradeoff affect both openness and governance?

PA: There is a fundamental conflict between “openness” and “financing of activities”. If all activities are free (which some consider for the ultimate “openness”) it is difficult for the SSO to finance a professional body with publications, testing, consultancy etc. On the other hand, if membership has a fee or services must be paid for, some will accuse the SSO for not being “open for all”. Most SSOs in reality have found a balance between the two extremes, and I don’t believe a totally “free SSO” can be effective. Therefore the relationship between “free access” and “openness” can be questioned.

TS: Following the publication of “Evaluation of Ten Standards Setting Organizations with Regard to Open Standards”, what feedback did you receive? In particular, how did the Danish Government, who commissioned the report, respond to the findings?

PA: It must be understood, that the report was commissioned because the government was caught in a hot political discussion of ODF and OOXML and whether to allow both or just one of them. At the end the government decided – to much regret for open source lobbyists – to allow both document standards to co-exist, at least for a period of time. This study was one of the arguments why both standards actually met the requirement, decided by the parliament, that standards in the public sector must be open. The decision about the two co-existing document standards was re-evaluated recently, but the government did not reverse the previous strategy.

TS: Let’s conclude with a forward-looking question: Will we see governments increasingly dictating the rules for standard setting organization governance? Will this development be legitimate or, as we have seen with official standards bodies, will this simply reduce efficiency through competition?

PA: I have been a market analyst for 20 years. I have always found it intriguing when governments have tried to dictate market behavior – and I really have difficulty finding examples of when this has been a success, while there are many examples of the opposite. Following on from this, I seldom find it a good idea when governments try to impose rules in areas where market dynamics are much better instruments to achieve the goals.

Per Andersen Biography: Since 1996, Per Andersen has been the managing director for IDC Nordic. With a total staff of 30, IDC Nordic has offices in Copenhagen and Stockholm and is the leading provider of ITC market intelligence in the region. Since 2007, Per Andersen is also managing IDC Benelux, located in Amsterdam, with a total staff of 20. From 1996 to 2006, Per Andersen also managed IDC’s European Software Market Research Centre. From 1990 to 1996, Per Andersen was the manager of IDC’s European Unix and Client/Server Centre publishing market research reports on the European market to IT vendors and users. In addition to this, he has been responsible for starting up IDC’s Internet/intranet research in Europe. As one of IDC’s lead analysts on the European markets for software, IT services, Internet, eBusiness, servers and open systems, Per Andersen has been presenting at a wide range of conferences world wide, and his opinions are highly regarded by the press. Per Andersen holds a M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from University of Aarhus, Denmark.

Looking at the ten organizations researched there are differences in the number of requirements in which they score positive. It is difficult to see any clear patterns in the ratings though. We believe there are a number of reasons for this. Standard organizations are generally aware of the need of openness because they all aim at providing successful, widely accepted standards. However, the concepts of openness and consensus have been implemented using different models that relate to the type of organization, their formal foundation and their degrees of formalization. We therefore see the apparent differences in openness as a sign of the structure chosen by the organizations.

In conclusion there are, indeed, differences between standard setting organizations in terms of “openness” and certainly in terms of how “openness” is implemented. It can be, however, difficult to make a distinction of which form of “openness” is the most appropriate.

Executive summary of “Evaluation of Ten Standard Setting Organizations with Regard to Open Standards” (92 page PDF version available here) posted with permission given by Per Andersen, Managing Director, IDC Nordic & Benelux.